Happy Anniversary

35 years ago today, Roberta Flack released an album which – given its title – you’d think was an album’s worth of duets with Donny Hathaway, but it isn’t. There are a couple, yes, but the reason it isn’t filled with them from start to finish…well, that’s a sad tale, to be sure.

The album entitled Roberta Flack featuring Donny Hathaway was, as you’d expect, intended to be a sequel to the 1972 collaboration between the two R&B singers, an effort which earned the duo a #1 R&B hit (“Where Is the Love”), a top-10 R&B hit (“You’ve Got a Friend”), and an additional top-30 R&B hit (“You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’”). The two had known each other since attending Howard University together, creating a comfort level which was evident when they were singing together, but Hathaway’s struggle with depression – later diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenia – led to estrangement between him and Flack at various points during their careers. It wasn’t until 1978 that they recorded together again, but given the success of the end result, “The Closer I Get to You,” they decided to take another shot at recording a full album.

45 years ago today, jazz saxophonist Eddie Harris recorded an album which, based on its cover, could well have been subsidized by Sunkist. We don’t remember seeing the company’s name anywhere in the thank-you section, but if you’ve got some better explanation for artwork features a sax player with an orange for a head standing on a beach with oranges in front of him, we’re all ears.

What’s that? You say it probably has something to do with the fact that Come On Down! was recorded in Miami? Well, sure, that could have something to do with it. In fact, you’re probably right. That actually makes a lot more sense. (Note to self: remove Sunkist conspiracy theory from Come On Down! Wikipedia page ASAP.)

20 years ago, Jewel Kilcher – the “Kilcher” is silent – released her debut album, Pieces of You, to general indifference.

No, seriously.

Not that it didn’t eventually go platinum 12 times over, of course, but if you look back at Jewel’s chart history, you can see how the Pieces of You story unfolds, and it’s a considerably longer tale than you might’ve realized.

Although the album first landed on record store shelves on February 28, 1995, to say that it was something less than an overnight success is a significant understatement: the first single from the album, “Who Will Save Your Soul,” didn’t even see release until June of the following year. Once that happened, though, the buzz on Jewel began to build. After that song resulted in her first top-20 single (it topped out at #11 on the Billboard Hot 100), she scored an even bigger hit with the follow-up single, “You Were Meant for Me,” which went all the way to #2, and she matched its success with “Foolish Games.”

38 years ago today, Pink Floyd’s Animals was released in America, at which point a number of UK Floyd fans no doubt point in the general direction of the US and roundly mocked their across-the-pond counterparts for having only just gotten their hands on an album that they’d owned since January 23.

Recorded at 35 Britannia Row in Islington, north London, in a former block of church halls the band converted into a recording studio and storage facility, Animals was an Orwellian concept album which examined members of social classes as if they were – as the title suggests – animals. (In case you’ve somehow never listened to the album, we’re talking about pigs, dogs, and sheep.) In addition, the members of Pink Floyd treated the album as a reaction to punk rock, since they’d been pointedly singled out as a target by Johnny Rotten, who turned a Floyd shirt into an angry statement against the musical enemy by scribbling the words “I Hate” above the band’s name. This turned out to be slightly ironic, as Nick Mason clearly had a fondness for punk, subsequently producing The Damned’s second album, Music for Pleasure, but, hey, it got the Sex Pistols’ fans riled up, and that’s what the gesture was all about, anyway.

32 years ago today, a regal young man from Minneapolis released the single that took him into the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 for the first time in his career, inspiring a generation of confused young listeners to ask, “How do you have a pocket full of horses?”

Prince had been fortunate enough to enter the Hot 100 with his very first single, 1978’s “Soft and Wet,” and while he only just barely succeeded in that particular accomplishment (the track topped out at #92), it was enough to put him on the pop music radar right off the bat, resulting in his first big hit single, “I Wanna Be Your Lover” (#11), the following year. Unfortunately, Prince soon found himself drifting away from having pop hits and into developing more of a straightforward R&B audience.

45 years ago today, The Doors released their fifth album, an endeavor that found the quartet taking a step back with their sound and finding a much more creatively successful collection of songs in the process.

After earning their first #1 album with 1968’s Waiting for the Sun, The Doors apparently decided that they were free to experiment a bit with their sound. Unfortunately, the end result of that attempt at experimentation – 1969’s The Soft Parade, which featured brass, strings, and a heavier-than-usual Robby Krieger presence (not that that’s necessarily a bad thing) – failed to match the commercial success of its predecessor, stalling at #6, and only produced one hit single. Granted, it was a pretty big one, but even with “Touch Me” making it to #3 on the Billboard Hot 100, it was clear that The Doors had made a creative misstep, at least as far as their fans were concerned, and something needed to change.

35 years ago today, an album was released which found one of the most popular punk bands in America joining forces with one of the most famous producers of all time to create a catchy concoction that rocked hard while still delivering some insidiously memorable hooks.

The idea of Phil Spector producing the Ramones might seem crazy on the surface – because let’s face it, a lot of things about Phil Spector seem crazy on the surface – but given the band’s admitted and oft-displayed love of ‘60s pop, it actually makes a lot of sense. In fact, Spector had reached out to the band earlier, offering to help with Rocket to Russia, but they took a pass at the time because they felt like it would change things up too much. Looking back, they were probably right, because Spector’s presence in the studio certainly changed things considerably.

39 years ago today, Genesis released an album which proved to be a defining moment in their evolution: their first full-length effort featuring Phil Collins as the band’s frontman.

The idea of Collins taking over for Peter Gabriel, Genesis’s original lead singer, was not one which had been planned from the beginning. Indeed, when Gabriel bid the band adieu, Collins, Tony Banks, Steve Hackett, and Mike Rutherford held auditions for a new singer, and even as they were doing so, Collins would’ve been just fine if Genesis had carried on and played nothing but instrumentals. After almost bringing aboard a gentleman named Mick Stickland as their new singer, the band and Stickland ultimately opted against moving forward with their collaboration, predominantly due to the fact that the backing tracks for the band’s new album had already been recorded, and they weren’t in the best key for Stickland. After additional auditions proved unsuccessful, Collins opted to take a shot at singing “Squonk,” after which he found himself more or less drafted for the position.

50 years ago today, Sammy Davis, Jr. released an album which found him collaborating with Sam Butera and the Witnesses, a collaboration which resulted in one of the strongest full-length efforts in Davis’s discography.

When the Feeling Hits You came at a time in Davis’s career when he was pretty darned prolific: it was one of four albums he released during the course of 1965, remarkably enough, with the others being If I Ruled the World, The Nat King Cole Songbook, and Sammy’s Back on Broadway, but despite delivering so much work in so short a time, he wasn’t making much headway on the singles charts. In fact, it had been 10 years since his last top-10 hit (“Something Got to Give,” in 1955), which is kind of surprising when you consider how familiar a face he’d become in Hollywood, having spent most of his time since the start of the ‘60s on the silver screen, appearing in “Ocean’s 11,” “Sergeants 3,” “Convicts 4,” “Robin and the 7 Hoods,” and several other films that didn’t have numbers in their titles.

33 years ago today, Depeche Mode released their fourth single, a little ditty which served as the record buying public’s first taste of their second-full length effort (A Broken Frame) and, perhaps more crucially at the time, the first song to emerge from the band’s camp since Vince Clarke had decamped to form Yazoo with Alison Moyet.

“See You” is certainly catchy enough, but let’s face it: it’s also pretty slight. Still, the masses liked the music – it hit #6 on the UK singles chart – and slight or not, it was substantial enough to serve as confirmation that Martin Gore, who’d stepped up as the band’s predominant songwriter when Clarke hit the road, knew his way around a pop hook.